Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days" is a novel about the new crown epidemic

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Book Review

Searchlight Good Book Judge | Wang Chunlin (Professor of Shanxi University, Editor-in-Chief of Novel Review)

Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days", although it has a certain regrettable "unfinished nature", on the whole, it is still an extremely rare novel that dares to face the new crown epidemic and can really pay attention to and think about the human survival situation and its spiritual reality that is closely related to the new crown epidemic. If Golding's "Lord of the Flies" is trying to think about the manifestation of the evil of human nature caused by the internecine killing between twelve- and thirteen-year-old children trapped on a small island for survival resources, then Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days" is to further think about the performance through the small incisions of two families, in the isolation caused by a sudden new crown epidemic, how the evil of human nature in people's hearts is stimulated.

Text / Wang Chunlin

In 2020 AD, that is, before the arrival of the Year of Gengzi in the lunar calendar, no matter which human individual, I am afraid it is difficult to predict that not only in this year, even if the pace of time has been extended to the middle of 2021, the entire human race will still be trapped in the great catastrophe of the new crown and faltering.

To a large extent, such a situation can easily remind us of the famous poem that Mao Zedong once lamented: "There are many green waters and green mountains, and Hua Tuo is helpless to be a worm". On the one hand, we certainly have to admit that modern human science and technology, including medicine, have made rapid progress, but on the other hand, a heavy reality that cannot be ignored in any way is that we will be helpless in the face of many mutated viruses. If nothing else, the seemingly "insignificant" new crown virus alone has seriously undermined the normal order of human life. To this day, after the catastrophe of the Second World War, Sizhi Adorno once emphasized with deep meaning: "After Auschwitz, poetry ceased to exist." He did not mean that poetry (or literature) had lost its raison d'être after suffering as Auschwitz, but that it was necessary to tell the public in such an extreme way that, after such a terrible catastrophe as Auschwitz, the ideological value position of the poet or writer in literary creation should and must undergo some fundamental change. Although one is a man-made disaster and the other is a natural disaster, the specific origin and cause can indeed be called a difference, but in a sense, the new crown epidemic that mankind has encountered since 2020 and has not seen a complete end so far can also be regarded as a huge disaster like Auschwitz.

From this point of view, in the midst of the catastrophe of the new crown epidemic, or after the complete end of the future, how poets or writers should make necessary literary and artistic meditations on the epidemic itself and the huge negative impact of the epidemic on human existence is undoubtedly an important question that cannot be avoided.

Although it is not so satisfactory, we cannot but note that as early as 2020, when the epidemic was raging, there were already some sensitive writers who responded to the disaster of the new crown epidemic in the form of novels. With the passage of time, after entering 2021, works in this area, whether fictional or non-fiction, are gradually increasing. Although other works of the same genre certainly have their own advantages, if only in terms of my limited reading horizons, the most noteworthy novel in this regard so far is probably Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days", which is not too large (published in Harvest Magazine, No. 3, 2021).

Why is a novel named "Fourteen Days"? Before reading the work, just this title has aroused enough realistic associations in me. In general, people are forced to self-isolate for fourteen days during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is this a novel that hits the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic in the current era? This is indeed the case, and soon after the exhibition volume, when I read the "Check-in" section and read that Liu Zijian's father-in-law and family actually broke the original plan and arrived in Yidu in advance on the 28th day of the 28th month of the Waxing Moon by car, I already had a strong premonition that this was a long novel that directly attacked the new crown epidemic in a swift manner. Here, a key question that cannot be avoided is what kind of way Yao Emei will artistically cut into the reality of the epidemic.

We all know that in the current era of Chinese society, although under the impact of so-called modernity, the importance of the family or family concept has been much lower than that of the traditional era, compared with other countries and nationalities in the world, we still attach the most importance to the family or family concept. A prominent example of this is that a phrase like "home country and one reason" or "family world" is still popular to this day. It is probably because of this that many Writers in China will consciously or unconsciously choose the family or family as their entry point in their writing process. With the help of the perspective of the family or family, the writer can often subtly refract social problems in the overall sense. In this "Fourteen Days", Yao Emei's wisdom is also first reflected in her choice of a basic social cell such as the family as her artistic entry point.

In this novel, which is difficult to say which one is the protagonist of the novel, the initiator of the entire storyline is an ordinary citizen named Liu Yucheng, who is particularly good-looking in Yidu, located in southwest Hubei. Liu Yucheng and his wife Xiuzhi have two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Liu Zijian, is a nerd who does not understand affairs and only knows how to read: "The eldest son Zijian did not get married until the summer of this year (when referring to 2019, the author's note). This honest lump who can only read has always been the heart disease of Liu Yucheng's two sons, not to worry about his reading, on the contrary, he never let people worry about reading, as long as it is something other than reading, there is nothing that does not let people worry. "Just the matter of falling in love and getting married is enough to make Liu Yucheng and his wife break their hearts." Because as early as during college, he had been wishfully in love with a sister who was one year older than himself, and he actually delayed his marriage problems for many years: "Female classmates are Zijian's first love, and it is also a disaster for Zijian, because of her, Zijian has isolated herself from the whole world." Even so, the appearance of Yuanyuan, a wuhan native who eventually became his wife, was simply a great blessing for Liu Yucheng and his wife, who had already broken their hearts for their son's marriage. Because Yidu and Wuhan are too far apart, the two relatives, including the wedding, have only met twice. Unexpectedly, when they met for the second time at the wedding, Liu Yucheng, who was not broad-minded enough, started his own little nine-nine in his heart, and inexplicably had the idea of comparing himself with his relatives living in a big city: "At that moment, Liu Yucheng realized that this silent contest with his relatives was not lost in money or status, he was losing in insight. It can also be said that on the surface, it was he who lost to his relatives, in fact, it was Yidu who lost to Wuhan. He was angry and unconvinced. At that time, he was thinking that he must find a chance to win back this round and let his relatives know that he was not useless. Fundamentally, Liu Yucheng's seemingly inexplicable spiritual complex is actually the reason why his inferiority complex is at work.

Since this is the case, one of his plans to save face is that he must find a way to invite his relatives from Wuhan to Yidu for a New Year. In this way, there is a dialogue between the two relatives at the wedding: "At the family banquet after the wedding, Liu Yucheng said: I have not done anything else in the past two years, I have done one thing, I have made a house, three floors, seven or eight hundred squares. Pro-family surprise: Wow! Oh the rich! When will you move to a new home? Let's have a glass of wine together! Liu Yucheng said that even if you move housewarming, now even the scale of marriage and birthday is limited. I have an idea, the children are the first year, our family is also the first year, it is better that we spend the New Year together, no one can manage the New Year, just to avoid the children running on both sides, how? The family smiled and said: I think it is okay. Although the family also stressed that they were a family of six at that time, Liu Yucheng, who wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to win back a round, did not take the family of six seriously at all: "The family said, I calculate, I am now a family of six, a big family Oh, you have to have a mental preparation." Liu Yucheng said, not as much as me, I added eleven mouthfuls together. The two laughed: eleven plus six, seventeen. One four seven, three six nine, good auspicious numbers! In this way, on the one hand, because Liu Yucheng really intends to win back face by showing off his three-story building, on the other hand, because of the active cooperation of his father Wu without any shirking, the plan of the two families to spend the Spring Festival in 2020 together has also been put on the official agenda. But in fact, the capital used by Liu Yucheng to show off, that is, the three-story building that sounds particularly remarkable, with an area of up to seven or eight hundred square meters, has a prominent "mistaken hit" nature. Although in Liu Yucheng's own feelings, "fortunately, he did not follow the trend and did not follow the trend to her (referring to Liu Yucheng's wife Xiuzhi, the author's note) to do 'farming to non-farming', honestly as his 'half-family'." Think about it, the agricultural transfer is not more than 30,000 (30,000 in the 1980s), and the current land cost is 389,000, just because he made a correct decision, he actually saved everything, and he didn't have to pay a penny! But the truth of the facts is that it is not that Liu Yucheng has extraordinary foresight and can foresee the future social development trend, but that at that time, he simply did not have the ability to "change from farming to Africa" for his wife, and he did not expect that in the end with the unexpected migration of the times, Liu Yucheng's inaction turned out to be a "correct" choice with prominent prescient colors. The vanity and shallowness of an ordinary citizen who has retired from his family so and so complacently because of his incompetence at that time are so shameless, will naturally be revealed.

But in any case, for Yao Emei's novel "Fourteen Days", the existence of Liu Yucheng's ostentatious psychology is very necessary. To a large extent, Liu Yucheng's kind of ostentatious psychology is very similar to the fulcrum that Archimedes needed. Archimedes said that as long as there was that supposed fulcrum, he could have pried up the earth. We say that without the unquenchable ostentatious psychology of ordinary citizen Liu Yucheng, the entire "Fourteen Days" will lose the fundamental internal driving force of the storyline. Therefore, if from the perspective of a hypothetical narrative, Liu Yucheng's ostentatious psychology actually constitutes a basic narrative premise.

Just as the ignorant fisherman accidentally opened King Solomon's bottle and released the devil who had been imprisoned for many years, Liu Yucheng, who only wanted to save face by means of self-show, could not have imagined that what he had inadvertently opened was also a "bottle" that was very similar to King Solomon's bottle.

Although he had long been prepared to receive his own Wu Dad's family, to Liu Yucheng's surprise, Wu Dad and they would actually "default" in Yidu in advance. According to the previous plan, because after the end of Yidu, Wu's family will continue to go to Chongqing, "so the Wuhan family can only give up self-driving, take the high-speed rail to Yichang on the 29th of The 29th of The Month of La, Yidu will send a car to pick up the station", but because Zijian and their two sons suddenly changed their itinerary and wanted to take a detour to Beijing to do things, they decided to wait until the two of them met, "and then notify the station pick-up staff in Yidu." "But who knows, it was only on the twenty-eighth day of the Waxing Moon, Father Wu and his party had suddenly appeared in Yidu in the form of self-driving.

Although Liu Yucheng and his wife have been kept in the dark, some clues in the narrative process have vaguely revealed the gradual deterioration of the social situation. One is the prominent appearance of masks, "a young girl wearing a mask came over, it was Yuanyuan sister", "Liu Yucheng found out that Yuanyuan's mother also has a mask, and at this time she put it on her wrist." Another is that Father Wu's family is not behaving normally: "Everyone listened, didn't speak, just hmmm, oh, absent-minded, Liu Yucheng was a little confused, if they are really not interested in this city, why don't they look outside without blinking." "Another abnormal place is," he said, he himself found a problem: he didn't want to come from Jingzhou for two hours, how did they doze off, like they had driven a night train? However, it was not until Zixia and they returned from Nanjing that the truth of the matter began to gradually surface. First, after learning the news that Father Wu and his whole family had arrived, Zixia's fierce reaction: "Mom, don't you know? Wuhan now has a very serious infectious disease, and some of them have a cough? Does anyone have a fever? Immediately after that, it was Father Wu who was on their way back from the Yanchi River to Yidu, and the official release of the news of the lockdown in Wuhan.

Although until this time, Liu Yucheng was still in a state of ignorance, the fierce reaction of Wu's father's family was enough to explain the seriousness of the situation. If not, Father Wu would not have been able to seize his car keys recklessly after a heated argument with his eldest son-in-law. In this way, on the one hand, according to the previous plan, Liu Yucheng and Wu Dad's two families did gather in the three-story building of Liu Yucheng's family, and a traditional New Year's Festival began. On the other hand, with the issuance of the quarantine order, an unexpected reality and human calamity also began to gradually descend on these two families who had temporarily put together for the Spring Festival. But before they officially began their fourteen-day-long life of home isolation, the first spark to burst out was a short encounter between Zixia and Wu's father. First of all, Zi Xia's aggressive gunpowder was the first to attack: "I said it bluntly, according to the regulations, people who have returned from Wuhan and people who have come into contact with people from Wuhan must self-isolate for fourteen days. Not only did they have to isolate, but now even we have to isolate, and like them, everyone in this room has become the object of suspicion and cannot go anywhere. The next step was Father Wu's immediate response: "I can assure you that our family is safe", "Secondly, I am very confident in our family's immunity", "This time I came to Yidu because I had an appointment, if it were not for the appointment first, we would not have left home in a hurry." In fact, I am also very anxious now, first, I have caused you too much trouble, and second, I have many relatives and friends in Wuhan, I am very worried about them, fortunately, so far, they are fine. "A practical situation is that This self-confession of Father Wu is true and false, and it can really be described as mixed. On the one hand, Father Wu's arrival was indeed because there was an appointment first. Otherwise, no matter how urgent the situation in Wuhan is, they probably wouldn't have thought of going to their homes (due to China's ethical culture) to escape the scourge of the epidemic. But on the other hand, The act of Papa Wu's early arrival by car shows that their arrival does imply an undeniable intrinsic motive to escape the reality of the epidemic.

In any case, from a narrative level pre-narrative point of view, Zi Xia and Father Wu's short-term encounter with each other before the fourteen-day long isolation life began, but to a large extent, it also predicted or revealed to a large extent that in the process of the next fourteen days of isolated life, the sharp contradictions between the two families or within each other were simply impossible to avoid, and the evil on the natural level of human nature.

Unlike the lockdown of Wuhan, the specific quarantine of Yidu begins on the first day of the Chinese New Year. In the face of the quarantine order issued by the relevant departments, Liu Yucheng and his family must make a choice, that is, how to deal with the Wu Dad family from Wuhan. Although zixia was not so fierce and vaguely opposed, for the purpose of maintaining the affection between relatives, Liu Yucheng finally decided to leave Wu's father and mother in his own home at any risk: "I have decided, we will not report." Relatives in Wuhan, you should not have other ideas, you are what I have called for, I will definitely be responsible for you to the end, but these days you have to suffer some grievances, try not to come out during the day, try not to open the curtains, do not let outsiders see, especially do not let others hear your Wuhan accent. Therefore, although there is still an inevitable shallow and mediocre side, Liu Yucheng at this time, because he left Wu's father at home, can still be regarded as a man with a heavy commitment.

At this time, Liu Yucheng could not have imagined that it did not matter if he left Father Wu and his family behind in a moment of indignation, the key problem was that it was his indignant move, because he was in a specific period of the new crown epidemic, which would eventually lead to a serious crisis of family ethics. Further, in this unexpected crisis of family affection, along with the revelation of a scary essence of survival behind the original glamorous appearance of life, the inherent evil of human nature hidden in the depths of the heart will also ferment and explode.

The first is the forced presentation of the secrets of personal life. For example, Zi Xia's unbearable living conditions. First, the fact of her divorced marriage. Only in the process of returning to Yidu for the New Year this time, her divorce situation, which had long become a fact, was known to her parents. Before Zixia arrived home, it was her son and her "younger brother" who arrived home first. In the face of the sudden appearance of Lili, Liu Yucheng and his wife were surprised: "What? Did you have a second child? How come such a big thing didn't tell us? So he immediately questioned Zi Xia on the phone, and the result he got was naturally a logical fact of divorce. But only when ZiXia and Lili's father returned to Yidu's home together, in the process of getting along for a short time, Liu Yucheng and his wife were able to further understand, but it turned out that Zixia and Lili's father were just a couple of men and women in the big city who lived together according to the agreement. In the face of her parents who were extremely surprised, Zixia gave her own reason: "Is it useful to say it?" I said that my monthly salary is only about 10,000 yuan, which is not enough for the daily life of our mother and son, do you believe it? "So I simply don't say anything, and the only way out is to find someone to live with." So we don't have a wedding, we don't have a marriage license, and in case there are problems in the future, we can save a lot of trouble! This is very good, AA system, the cost of living is at least fifty percent savings. With the help of such a detail, while fully highlighting the huge conceptual differences between the city's young zixia and traditional citizens such as Liu Yucheng and his wife, the writer cleverly wrote about a difficult situation for the daily survival of modern urban people. However, Liu Yucheng and his wife could not have imagined that with the passage and prolongation of the isolation time, Zixia would have a greater life secret forced to be helplessly exposed.

That is, I originally thought that Zixia had indeed gone abroad to Stay in Africa for a few years, but I did not expect that the truth of the fact was that Zixia was imprisoned for several years for committing murder and cutting people: "I cut down my father again." Around why he killed people, there was a dialogue between Zixia and his parents: "You didn't say cutting people. / You also know that my temper was not planned, but I did not hold back for a while. / Hidee finally eased up, gritted her teeth and scolded: Kill a thousand knives! Did he do something wrong and call the police? How not to castrate him? / Zixia then said: That's exactly what I thought. Sentenced to three years. "On the one hand, if it weren't for the sudden outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Zixia's secrets would be difficult to expose for a while." But on the other hand, the writer also tries to explore and express the causes of Zixia's personality: "Was she born so strong?" It's not to blame you, the son is preferred, every day to the two sons, you must give me admission to college,' 'Zixia I don't care, she is someone else's family anyway.' It was your words that stimulated her, and she studied hard to develop this character. In fact, Xiuzhi knows in her heart that in addition to this reason, there is something else, Zixia does not know why, that is, there is no other girl's gentle energy, speaking straight, hard Bang Bang..." In fact, in addition to the sexism from family education when she was a teenager, the cultivation of Zi Xia's impersonal hard Bang Bang character is probably more the result of the harsh living environment after adulthood.

In addition to the hard-natured Zi Xia, there is also the zi jian who has always been cowardly. To say that Zixia has secrets that no one knows, some people believe that along with Zijian, who has always been indisputable with the world, there are also his own secrets that cannot be told, which is somewhat unexpected. Moreover, the problem of the "scholar bully" Zijian, who only knew how to read since he was a child, even appeared in his studies. The first signs of Zijian's problems were reflected in his seemingly inexplicable secret crying. On the first day of the isolation life, Yuanyuan inadvertently found that Zijian's performance was abnormal: "He did not move, she propped up her arm, looked over, Zijian's mobile phone was put aside, eyes were closed, and the eye sockets were wet." What's wrong? He covered his eyes and told her to ignore him. She hurried back and lay down. Although the well-behaved Yuanyuan did not explore further, the doubts in his heart could not be dispelled: Can a person who has never cried after watching movies cry at this particular moment because of the lockdown of Wuhan? Only later, because of the problem of isolation, after a sharp conflict with his sister Zixia, in the face of his aggressive wife Yuanyuan, who openly proposed to divorce, Zijian was forced to helplessly tell the truth of the matter: "It doesn't matter, whatever you want." Zi Jian suddenly turned off the computer and went to bed and lay down. I'm too lazy to argue with you about these things, I can't manage my own business, to be honest with you, my paper review seems to have something wrong. ”

Specifically, one of his anonymous judges, three off-campus judges, failed. And this, in fact, means that Zijian is very likely to be unable to complete his career. Only in connection with this situation can we fully understand, but it turns out that the reason why he will cry secretly alone is mainly because an anonymous review did not pass. In fact, he knew this news very early, but because of psychological cowardice and evasion, he did not have the courage to face it calmly. If it weren't for the fierce attack on Yuanyuan because of the isolation problem, he would probably have withheld the news until the time when he could no longer hide it. Zi Jian, who had been in the dark, did not know that the person who was most hurt by his academic setbacks was not actually himself, but Yuanyuan, who was his wife: "How can it be so unlucky?" Doesn't it mean that he grew up as a bully? How can I not even pass the paper? If she really can't finish her career, what about her dream? What about her planned life? How is she going to explain it to her girlfriend? In this way, it further involves Yuanyuan's own unknown inner secret. The reason why she married the nerd Zijian was closely related to this little nine-nine in her heart. But it turned out that one of Yuanyuan's girlfriends, because she married a university teacher who later went abroad as a visiting scholar, could not only accompany her abroad to accompany her, but also brought back a child with American citizenship. Although Zi Jian's woodenness is boring, it is also a wise choice if he can imitate the method of his girlfriend. Because of this, there was a seemingly mismatched marriage between the two of them. If Zijian can't even graduate with a doctorate, then the dream of not only going abroad to accompany him but also thinking of bringing back an American child can only become a bubble.

Only because of this, once he heard that Zijian could not graduate, yuanyuan, who had already hugged her husband because of the isolation, suddenly broke out, secretly making up her mind that the first thing to do after the unsealing of Wuhan was to dissolve the marriage relationship between them. In fact, also in the situation where the secrets of life are exposed, there is also the sister whose text status is not very important. The secret between the sister and the elementary school classmate Yi Xiu appeared on the seventh day after the brother-in-law and Zishu "fled" together. That night, Yuanyuan unexpectedly found her sister lying in the bed chatting with Yixiu on her mobile phone. In the face of Yuanyuan's questioning about their first love, the sister's answer was: "Don't count, somehow it was rumored to be like that." He was also trapped in Yichang, where he had relatives, and it was only a twenty-odd minute drive from us, and we couldn't say anything without seeing each other. I've already told him my address anyway. In fact, it is precisely because of Yi Xiu's secret help that her sister later returned to Wuhan by taking a food delivery car. But just when we thought that there would be a little romance between my sister and Yixiu, reality gave a not without a cruel answer. When Yuanyuan asked her sister if she was with Yixiu, what she got was a disappointed sister who was angry for a while: "Bullshit! He didn't get in the car at all! He also said: I didn't say to go to Wuhan with you! I was stunned! In the car, I flipped up our conversation, and sure enough, from start to finish it was just what I thought, neurosis! "We are certainly not trying to encourage elopement outside of marriage, the problem is that when an era and a "romance" as promised cease to exist, the diseases of this era are in fact very serious. In the final analysis, whether it is Zijian and Yuanyuan, or Yuanyuan's sister, the exposure of these life secrets can be said to be the disaster caused by this epidemic. This is further extended, not to mention the secret of the life of Zijian and Yuanyuan, at the extreme, the life of the entire human race will eventually be completely changed by this sudden epidemic.

Reading "Fourteen Days", no matter what, a storyline setting that cannot be ignored is the joint escape of Yuanyuan's brother-in-law and Zishu. Although they only met in Pingshui, perhaps because of their special similar temperaments, the two of them soon became good friends at first sight. To a large extent, it is only because their three views are highly consistent that there will be a later joint escape. Although yuanyuan's brother-in-law's original desire was to find a way to return to Wuhan and spend time with his family, he did not expect that after the two of them actually went on the road, they found that because of the heavy setting of various roadblocks, they could not return to Wuhan as they wished. Not only can you not return to Wuhan, but you want to retreat, and it is impossible to return to Yidu. Since they could not move forward or retreat, the two of them could only drive around in fear like lost dogs. From the perspective of art form, in a long novel focusing on the family or the internal life of the family, why does the writer Yao Emei have to set such a plot clue, and must let the two of them overflow beyond the focus field of vision in the way of joint escape, the key reason is that Yao Emei tries to jump out of the relatively narrow and narrow scope of the family or family in such a way, with the help of the vision of the two of them, to do a broader and broader panoramic scan of the Chinese social reality under the serious troubles of the epidemic. In turn, it provides a sufficiently broad background for the core story of the novel. To make a metaphor that may not be so appropriate, if the story of Liu Yucheng and Wu Dad's two families belongs to the so-called close-up scene in photography, then, with the help of Zishu and Yuanyuan brother-in-law's joint escape, the writer tries to express the so-called long-range view in photography, and many times, only by organically integrating the close-up and long-term view, we can have a relatively comprehensive understanding and grasp of the reality of the epidemic in the current era.

In this regard, the most typical is the many photographs taken by Yuanyuan's brother-in-law on the way, which was later displayed in the film festival entitled "I See": "This time, mainly from the wilderness, almost every photograph is empty, only the endless farmland, most of which is not sown, only the grass piles left in autumn; some birds are looking for them in the fields, and when they are tired, they fly on the wires and stand in a neat row; some people herd cattle, followed by a big dog, people look sad, and cows and dogs are happily waving their tails." The vegetable garden is piled with snow, and the green vegetables protrude from the snow and are not picked; the road is smooth and black, and stands majestically between heaven and earth in a low-lying posture. In the town, it was a different story, with all the shops closed and all the pedestrians wearing masks; many wearing raincoats on sunny days; an old man without a mask and a grapefruit shell over his mouth; some people with armbands guarding the intersection to block the passage of people and cars; some digging roads with excavators to form barricades; a child pressing his face against the window glass to look out, his nose crushed into an eight-commanded nose; a car parked on the side of the road, covered in mud and broken glass, reminiscent of its missing owner A tired man, standing on the side of the road, lifting a mask and smoking; an eight- or nine-year-old boy scurrying along the side of the road, crying as he walked; a middle-aged man pushing home an empty wheelchair with a cane on it; an ambulance parked on the side of the road, doctors did not dare to rescue the man lying on the ground, he jumped off the bridge, they were not sure if he carried the virus. "Please forgive me for recording all of Yao Emei's relevant texts here, otherwise it would not be enough to see a panoramic picture of Chinese society during the epidemic." Such a passage that appears in "Fourteen Days" can be regarded as a "Qingming River Map" of a specific historical period "painted" by the writer Yao Emei with the words in his hand, and the expression of those sentient beings who appear in it is also the expression of pain and sadness of the times. Therefore, for the storyline of such a passage, together with the escape of Yuanyuan's brother-in-law and zishu, their importance in the novel text cannot be overestimated.

But in contrast, the most important thing for the ideological and artistic success of the novel "Fourteen Days" is the huge challenge posed by the reality of the epidemic to the ethics of family affection in daily life. In this regard, the most representative is that after Liu Yucheng and Wu Dad's two families self-isolated, Zixia was isolated again. In fact, Zixia's defensive mentality against Wu's father and their family from Wuhan has been very obvious from the beginning, that is, before the fourteen-day isolation began: "Zixia smiled and squinted and said kind words, and quietly took two steps back under her feet, her mother did not know, so she followed two steps, Zixia retreated again, her mother entered again, Zixia stretched out her hand, pointed to the chair and said to her mother: You sit and you sit, don't be polite." Mom just finished, Dad immediately stepped forward, this time Zi Xia suo avoided: don't be polite, don't be polite, I'll go and bring you the teapot. Betake oneself to one's heels. Witnessing such a situation, the onlooker Qing Yuanyuan, looking in the eyes, pain in the heart: "A cool stream of coolness is slowly injected from the top of the head, the circle has been seen from the courtesy just now, Zixia is deliberately keeping a distance from them, but unfortunately the mother is too involved to notice." Since there was an obvious defensive mentality at the beginning, it was only later, after officially entering the fourteen-day isolation period, Zixia's performance became more and more intense, and it was reasonable. After the formal quarantine began, Zixia first refused to eat at the same table with Wu's father and his family: "The Zixia family did not want to eat at the same table with us, the reason was that the two children's immunity was originally low, did not dare to take risks, of course, I was uncomfortable in my heart, but I think we should not express dissatisfaction, after all, this is people's territory, we are from Wuhan, this is like original sin, it is better to bear with it for a while, just according to her, we are isolated on the second floor, wait for fourteen days to expire, see what she can say, Preferably by then the lockdown has been lifted. Among The most shocking words of Father Wu's request that his family must be patient for a while, there is nothing more shocking than the word "original sin". Such a description by the writer can even remind us of the Jews who also had a strong sense of original sin during World War II. Then, just on the third day, Zixia further gave birth to the idea of strict isolation with Father Wu and his family at home: "Zixia said: I have a suggestion, we should find something to block the aisle on the second floor, there are many children in the family, it is difficult to ensure that they will not sneak to the second floor, before the isolation is lifted, we must not have contact with the second floor, and the tray you send food to take back is disinfected." Then, on the fourth day, Zixia forced her cohabitant boyfriend LiLi's father to start the process of building the wall. In response to Zixia's insistence on building the separation wall despite Liu Yucheng and Zijian's opposition, Zijian gave a negative evaluation that can really be described as a sharp point: "Why are you doing such a big thing?" This is home, not a lunatic asylum, and it is not a prison. When Zixia repeatedly insisted: "What can be the consequences?" Don't you just look at this thing? Nothing has changed, as usual, meals are delivered regularly, and various services are on call", Zijian gave a sharp counterattack: "The prisoners who are locked up also deliver meals." I don't know how other friends feel, but anyway, in my case, I simply understand the two sentences that the writer expressed with the help of the cowardly nerd Jianzhi's mouth as the core "literary eye" of "Fourteen Days".

Of course, closely related to this is a strong feeling that Yuanyuan brother-in-law, who had experienced wandering and uncertain suffering with Zishu, after returning to Yidu: "From the time they left home on the night of the black wind in that month, he and Zishu, as well as all of them, were imprisoned in some dark tunnel, losing their freedom and laughing, even if he and Zishu escaped later, they were still in the tunnel, but their one was slightly wider." Words such as "lunatic asylum," "prison," "imprisoned," and "tunnel of darkness" have given a stark hint at some ideal direction for interpreting the text.

If the action of insisting on building the separation wall has strongly illustrated the hidden evil of human nature in Zixia's heart, then Liu Yucheng, as the head of the family, has changed his mentality in the process of isolation, and at a certain level, he has also echoed the artistic expression of related themes. We all know that as the initiator of inviting his family to Yidu for the New Year, Liu Yucheng not only started at the beginning, but even for a long time after the quarantine, he maintained a very friendly attitude towards Father Wu. But later, especially after the incident of Ai Zijian's suicide attempt, Liu Yucheng's attitude unconsciously began to change. In particular, when he accidentally discovered that Father Wu and his family had the intention of sneaking away, the evil of human nature that he had immersed in his heart was also stimulated. Specifically, the evil of Liu Yucheng's human nature is concentrated in his behavior of interfering with Wu's father's driving and eventually causing the car to fall into a lake called Nanfengyan: "As soon as the words fell, Liu Yucheng coughed violently, first covering his mouth and coughing in his throat, and then turning into a loud and explosive cough like a storm, and the people also convulsed, shrunk into a ball, and fell uncontrollably to Wu's father, Wu's father just had the idea of braking, the steering wheel had been pressed under Liu Yucheng's body, and the car quickly drove to the left and towards the South Wind Weir. "A sense of suspension came from the soles of his feet, followed by a fall, like an out-of-control elevator." Although Father Wu did not lose his life because of this, Liu Yucheng became a momentary lack of heart: "Liu Yucheng lay down until the next afternoon before getting up, and it was not a big problem, but he was weak and timid, Xiuzhi dropped a basin on the ground, and he heard that there was a thunderbolt on a sunny day." The reason is very simple, it is precisely because of the guilt in his heart, so Liu Yucheng will feel that his heart is nothing. To a large extent, it is also the inherent evil of human nature that Zixia and Liu Yucheng have successively shown, which has prompted me to further think of the British writer Golding's novel "The Lord of the Flies". If what Golding is trying to think about is the evil of human nature inspired by the internecine killing between twelve- and thirteen-year-old children trapped on an island for survival resources, then Yao Emei, in her "Fourteen Days", is to think about how the evil of human nature in people's hearts is stimulated in the isolation situation caused by a sudden new crown epidemic.

However, while fully affirming the relative success of Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days" ideological art, the author must point out in any case that in my personal expectation, this "Fourteen Days" should be better written and should have a greater intensity of ideological art. Perhaps because Yao Emei is too kind and not cruel enough to the characters and stories in her writing, or perhaps because of some other reason, a general feeling is that the more it reaches the second half, the more the ideological and artistic strength of the text weakens, so that "Fourteen Days" eventually becomes a flawed text. But fortunately, the writer has not only borrowed Liu Yucheng's feelings to express something ("Liu Yucheng came out from under the stairs, and a person stood outside nervously. What happens after fourteen days? Will you be able to move around freely after fourteen days? Outside everywhere closed doors, the opposite road can hardly see the vehicle, if it is not on the mobile phone from time to time to receive messages, really make people suspect that they are dreaming, in the dream is like this, quiet, no sound, can not see people. "), and also adopts an open-ended ending. What's more, from a practical point of view, after the fourteen-day quarantine and lockdown at the beginning of 2020, people, including Yidu, are still in a state of forced isolation because the new crown epidemic has not eased in the slightest. All of this makes Yao Emei's "Fourteen Days" have a prominent "unfinished nature". From this perspective, I am willing to work with Yao Emei, along with more readers, to continue to pay attention to and think about the human condition and its spiritual reality that are closely related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But before concluding my article, it is impossible not to mention in any case that Yao Emei once specifically quoted the "Purpose Wine Xinxin, Burning Fenfen" in the "Book of Poetry and Daya". The male corpse swallows drink, there is no after-difficulty" such a few sentences as the inscription of the novel. The general meaning of these few words is to pray reverently to the gods to continue to bless the world by inviting "public corpses" with fine wine. Only the last sentence, "There is no aftermath", although on the surface still belongs to the category of the greeting, it also clearly implies how to actively and effectively prevent various disasters. It can be seen from this that the fundamental intention of Yao Emei to quote these ancient verses as the inscription of the novel "Fourteen Days" is probably to pray for mankind and also to remind mankind that it must have some kind of self-reflection power that is sufficient to be alert.

On June 8, 2021, at 0:30 a.m., I finished writing at my xi'an apartment

(This article is a book review of Yao Emei's book "Fourteen Days.") The author is Wang Chunlin, professor at Shanxi University and editor-in-chief of Novel Review)

Chinese original | Novel

Fourteen Days

Yao Emei

Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House

February 2022

As the name suggests, the entire plot of "Fourteen Days" takes place compactly over fourteen days; the story is set in early 2020, a small city in Hubei Province, Yidu. Like a stage play, a large family is grouped together, and together they will spend fourteen days isolated from the outside world. Without the distance between work and social interaction, day by day, their every joy and sorrow is magnified, and they struggle with each other. Fourteen days, both long and short, after everything is back on track, "fourteen days" has also left a deep imprint in people's hearts.

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